THE FAILURES AND FUTURES OF CANCER VACCINES

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

The cancer vaccine field has yet to become a systematic science despite decades of work. This article speculates on why the field has failed and the next-gen approaches worth looking out for. One of the core problems in cancer vaccine development lies in the nature of neoantigens, which are often overwhelmingly similar to normal cellular proteins. The field has had some tentative early successes in pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, and a range of solid tumors. There is potential for a startup to outcompete incumbents by exploring novel target areas outside of the field's almost singular focus on single nucleotide variants.